The White House is hosting a forum Thursday afternoon its calling “Generation Next,” and it will feature some anti-LGBT speakers and panel members.
(The event has already begun and you can watch live below. Ivanka Trump is currently on stage.)
The anti-gay hate group Alliance Defending Freedom will be in attendance, and is sending Tyson Langhofer, an attorney who will be part of a panel discussion about the “crisis” of what conservatives are calling a lack of free speech in college campuses.
Moderating the panel will be White House Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway. Also in attendance will be Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Also in attendance during Thursday’s event will be Mercedes Schlapp, the White House Director of Strategic Communications.
Schlapp, as GLAAD notes, has “[c]riticized LGBTQ rights activists for protesting anti-LGBTQ Vice President Mike Pence, saying Pence was ‘tagged as the enemy because he is Christian and believes in traditional values on marriage and supports religious freedoms’ and that LGBTQ people ‘shove their liberal ideology in the face of others, in our schools and in the public square.'”
President Trump is slated to attend the forum, and will be interviewed by far right wing activist and Trump supporter Charlie Kirk.
Kirk has made a name for himself by founding a college student nonprofit called Turning Point USA, which has been funded by conservative billionaire Foster Friess. Kirk is anti-LGBT, and, according to GLAAD again, has said “it is ‘fascism’ that a baker has to equally sell a cake to a same-sex couple, then wrongly claims it is ‘exactly the same thing’ as forcing a Jewish artist to print neo-Nazi materials.”
Kirk is a frequent user of social media, often tweeting his thoughts, as these examples show:
(Trump does not support same-sex marriage.)
Watch live now below. Trump is slated to appear at 2:15 PM ET but expect that to be fluid.